Sunday, March 18, 2018

Trains are fun. And if the reports on travel sites as
disparate as the Guardian and The Daily Telegraph and the “how to” sites like the incomparable
Man in Seat 61 who all say that the rail journey from Bar to Belgrade is one of
the most scenic in the world, who am I to argue?

Well, I did argue slightly, and in a fit of “proving it to
myself” decided to go and see.

The tricky part seemed to be access to the train. Having
found out from my friend and railway guru Andy Brabin that the journey was best
approached from the south, and further learned that the Adriatic terminus at Bar
was difficult to get to and that the first hour of the journey over the
littoral was less than exciting, I decided to start the ride in the Montenegrin
capital of Podgorica.

The wrong train to Belgrade

Podgorica can hardly be described as beautiful. Having survived
countless onslaughts, bombings and razings a staple fate of much of this region, it
is now an administrative centre of concrete. More concrete than you could
imagine; shabby concrete, flaking concrete, heroic concrete, contemporary concrete,
Soviet concrete, concrete in fifty shades of grey. I stayed the night, in the
superb Hotel Terminus, and left as the sun tried to rise.

The day dawned sullenly, and the prospect of glimpsing the stunning
scenery seemed terribly optimistic. Low clouds set drizzle down everywhere, and
the small crowd, huddling under an awning on the platform, seemed somehow
resigned.

The wrong train

The train arrived; a touch shabbier that I was expecting,
but hey-ho, ten hours on an elderly suburban train couldn’t be that bad. I had
hoisted my luggage aboard with, I thought, a rather imaginative hoist, and
settled into my seat. I considered the train, and then the other passengers who
seemed in no hurry to board. Realising that I had actually boarded an elderly
suburban train readying itself to chug off in the opposite direction, I got
off, just in time to see the little train that probably could, chug off to the
coast.

Our train arrived, and by comparison, it was luxurious. Few passengers
boarded, and it was to my great fortune that I settled in a compartment with
Krsto Perovic, a fascinating man, and a specialist in Balkan Security issues,
whose company proved to be completely absorbing, and who made the day
exceptional.

The right train to Belgrade

The track rises fast as it leaves Podgorica. The scenery, seen
through a prism of drizzle and murky windows hinted at the spectacular. The
first section, the 175 kms that run through Montenegro reaches its highest
point of 1,032 metres at Kolasin, some 80 kms from Podgorica, requiring some
pretty aggressive engineering to haul the train up to this height so quickly.
The line was started in the 1950s, but not completed and officially open until
May 1976, taking over twenty years to figure out the endless problems that were
encountered.

It is a magnificent railway. 254 tunnels and 435 bridges
make the route possible, including the incredible Mala Rijeka Viaduct that
soars 198 metres above ground level. Krsto and I decided that we, and the rest
of the travelling public, were fortunate that we had had nothing to do with the
construction.

Our conversation ranged widely, as one would expect. The
West Balkans are a serious and complex region, and their intrigues and
machinations form an intricate web. Who knew that there were so many kinds of
Croats and so many strains of Serbs? Who knew that the embers of idiosyncratic conflicts
of the seventeenth century were kept burning so long? Who could have foreseen
the evolution of the Yugoslav Republic (less a country that I had always
imagined, and more of a confederation of both logical and artificial
components) would inevitably lead to the ghastly conflict of the 1990s? Who could
image that the Montenegrins would add two new letters to their alphabet while
the Croats were losing a couple in a federal attempt to synchronise the transcription
of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts?

The region is a miracle of diplomacy, military might,
ancient tribal instincts, mad geography and an uncaring and bored outside
world; it is still a world of Ottomans and Hapsburgs, Russians and Westerners,
of fact and fable and of both official and dubious wealth; it is a cauldron of
intrigue, and the more nuggets that Krsto let drop, the more fascinated I
became. Periodically, like a temporarily lifting mist, I thought that I
glimpsed a wide and comprehensive picture of the Balkans, but just as I felt
the illumination, the mist dropped back in place, time again became irrelevant,
the centuries piled up against one another and I had more questions.

The land flattened as we entered Serbia, and the scenery
more pastoral as we hurtled toward Belgrade. The site of substantial towns, now
lost without their centrally-planned factories are losing population fast as
the young head to Belgrade. One can see this loss in the partially finished
buildings, empty playgrounds and shuttered shops.

Heading to the Dining Car

The journey was comfortable; the dining car a delightful
throwback to the 1970s, including the complete absence of food (not counting a
pair of dried Wonderloaf slices imprisoning a sliver of rather dubious “Cheese
Food Product”. The coffee was good, the change of scenery was pleasant, and in
any case, forewarned of the train’s culinary deficiency we had brought our own
food along.

We reached the Belgrade suburbs on time; ten hours had
passed by in the blink of an eye. Ranging conversation with an interesting
companion is truly one of life’s treasures, and today I had won that particular
lottery. However, as we started to collect our bags, it came as a small
surprise to be advised that “the railway has run out of electricity for the
moment”. Or at least, that is what I gathered from Krsto’s simultaneous
translation.

And thus it was; nighttime, and more importantly dinner
time, saw us with two bonus hours on the rails, waiting for sufficient voltage
to be generated to push us along the last 10 miles into town. We waited,
chatted, ate the last of our curious, man-made picnics, until with a small
lurch we started forward. Riding the surge of the fresh energy gushing through
the overhead lines, we sped all the way into the Belgrade Central station.

It was a very fine ride indeed, and without doubt the best €23
(€20
for the ticket and €3 for the seat reservation) that I have ever spent on a
train ticket.